Reading Festival 2012: Kasabian end second day with crowd-pleasing set

Kasabian rounded Reading’s second day off in typically cocksure fashion with a set full of hits and some crowd-pleasing covers.

Kasabian’s Reading set was a mix of hits, crowd favourites and cover versions (Picture: Getty)

Things started in sinister fashion, as the band arrived on stage to a Jaws-like theme tune, which gradually began to incorporate the ‘aahs’ from Days Are Forgotten, the song that started the set, as singer Tom Meighan swaggered on, resplendent in a skeleton t-shirt and huge sunglasses.

In a hit-laden opening section, they continued with a fiery Shoot The Runner, while Velociraptor’s rapid-fire verses collided into its brilliantly ridiculous chorus, with Meighan yelping ‘He’s gonna kill ya, he’s gonna eat ya!’

A defiant Underdog continued the run of singles, with guitarist Serge Pizzorno dropping in parts of Pablo Gad’s roots classic Hard Times.

Meighan then urged to crowd to ‘look to the skies!’ as their guest trumpet player played the E.T. theme tune prior to Let’s Roll Just Like We Used To, while after an electro-tinged No I.D., the singer even bizarrely managed to lead the crowd in a chorus of 90s novelty hit Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop) by Scatman John, laughing ‘I’ve always wanted to do that!’

Pizzorno then took centre stage again for an emotional Take Aim, following it up with a cover of The Korgis’ Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime.

Meighan returned for a hyper Club Foot, the crowd shouting with its ‘Oosh!’ motif, as the singer added a line from Iggy And The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog at the end.

Lead singer Tom Meighan incorporated tracks by The Beatles and other artists into the band’s rousing set (Picture: Getty Images)

The Leicester boys weren’t finished with the covers there, either.

After a skittering Re-Wired and a propulsive Empire, the band broke into Fatboy Slim’s Praise You, with Tom dedicating it to ‘my baby Mimi – I love you’.

It soon segued into a menacing L.S.F., and as the band went to leave the stage, the crowd continued to sing its ‘ah-la-la’ refrain, with Serge staying behind to help keep it going for a while before joining his bandmates behind the scenes.

As a hail of spotlights spun around the stage, they returned for a brutal Switchblade Smile, while fans took Vlad The Impaler’s exhortations to ‘Get loose, get loose!’ very seriously indeed, with the furious moshing at the front not letting up as they finished on signature song Fire.

As the band embraced and made to leave the stage for good, Meighan lingered to give the crowd one last singalong, crooning the chorus to She Loves You by The Beatles.

‘Thank you, Reading! This was our mission!’ he declared. Looks like it was mission accomplished.